A wound is a kind of injuries to the body ad includes incisions, wounds of gastrointestinal tracts, gastric ulcers, burns, detachment, lacerations, incision, pressure ulcers called decubitus or bed sore, erosion, and lesions of surface tissues due to infection. In particular, it is desirable to accelerate healing of a surgical wound by a positive and direct treatment without relying on spontaneous cure because a patient having undergone a surgical operation generally has considerably reduced physical strength. Further, bed sore not only causes pain to a patient but entails a heavy expenditure for healing, and is expected to give rise to a great social problem with the recent increase in aged population. Healing of these wounds generally depends on synthesis of connective tissues and epithelial tissues by cell proliferation. A drug which stimulates or accelerates the differentiation and proliferation of cells at the lesion is believed valuable in healing of a wound.
Known drugs for accelerating healing of a wound mainly include extracts of naturally occurring substances, e.g., aloe, antibiotics, antiphlogistics, kallikrein, adenine, nicotinic acid, allantoin, vitamin A, zinc, c-AMP derivatives (see JP-A-63-107935, the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"), etc., and improved formulations for improving absorbability of the active ingredient have been proposed. With the recent various dermatohistological elucidations, an attempt at applying an epidermal growth factor (EGF) to postoperative healing of a wound has also been reported (see JP-A-3-106823).
However, the known compounds exemplified above have not been considered to have sufficient effects on healing a wound. Accordingly, it has been demanded to find a drug which directly acts on the develop to heal a wound.